The End of Avatar + Birth of the Alt-Weekly in Boston - PART ONE
Note: If you are unfamiliar with the story of how the Avatar newspaper formed, or its run-ins with classic Boston censorship, you may want to catch up. Our story starts here as the tensions between the Valley editors (those who wanted to publish an eclectic underground newspaper covering a myriad of topics) and the Hill folks (members of the Fort Hill Community who wanted the paper to chronicle their way of life and the thoughts of Mel Lyman) come to a head. The early story is in the book, but also plenty of places online too.
Fifty years ago this month, the final "authorized" issue of the controversial underground newspaper, Avatar, hit the streets of Boston. The front cover's message was clear: stay away from Mel Lyman and this is *our* newspaper.
Issue #24 was a shock to the Valley editors of Avatar as well as readers. The paper was usually chock full of essays, reporting and ads. Here we see, in issue 24, page after page of layouts devoid of text, only pics of community member Alison in the middle of an LSD trip. It was...unexpected.
FHC member Michael Kindman recalled, “What appeared in Issue Number 24 could only be interpreted as Mel and the Hill thumbing their noses at the other members of the Avatar alliance, challenging them to get with the Hill's program or split. I remember finding it embarrassing taking the new issue out on the streets to sell, somewhat at a loss to explain to readers why the format had changed so dramatically, so suddenly. But I guess I accepted the challenge, another early opportunity to face difficulty and let go of old ideas in Mel's name.”
Around a large table at 4 Fort Ave Terrace, soon after the publication of issue 24, the two parties tensely gathered around to discuss the goal of the newspaper. Charles Giuliano represented the Valley contingent, Mel Lyman, of course, spoke for the Hill people. Here were two old friends—they had gone on road trips together, once shared the same girlfriend, and reached astronomical levels of intoxication together at Richard Alpert’s house in Newton—now face to face as bitter opponents.
There was no compromise, but there was a capitulation. The valley writers could continue publishing a newspaper, but they were no longer to use the name Avatar. That was fine with Charles Giuliano, who went immediately to work on a new paper. Issue 25 ended up containing all the best elements of non-Mel Avatar. “I decided to put no logo on the cover,” Giuliano recalled, “I designed it as an I Ching hexagram which we threw as a group...It all felt very holistic and pure.”
During layout of the issue, Ed Beardsley, who was constantly on and off the Fort Hill Community bandwagon, made the curious decision to place a reversed Avatar logo on the inside cover. An off-again and on-again relationship with a woman on Fort Hill had made Beardsley's precise allegiance difficult to pinpoint at any given time. “[Ed] had some kind of deceptive explanation,” Giuliano said of the reversed logo. “I was too exhausted to grasp his full intent.” Readers who held up the cover of issue 25 to any source of light would then see the Avatar logo seep through the paper, like a hidden code indicating that the paper was still, secretly, The Avatar. The first person to catch it was the printer at American Colony printing plant in Worcester. Noticing the peculiarities of the issue, he called up editor and FHC member Brian Keating asking, “Is this paper Avatar or not?”
“It's not, why?” Keating asked.
“The Avatar logo is on the 2nd page,” the printer informed him. Keating was stunned. This was now war. “I was revulsed,” he later wrote in an issue of the New York Avatar, “For nearly two hours I sat almost catatonic until David Gude and Eben [Given] came in.” Just a few weeks earlier, Eben Given had punched Keating in the face onstage at Club 47, but this direct action apparently had cleared the air of the particulars of the unspecified gripe, and now the two began working together again against a common enemy. Keating had an idea that they could order extra copies of the new issue of New York Avatar for distribution in Boston, but David Gude had a better plan: the Fort Hill Community should seize the unauthorized Avatar issue before it hits the streets. “Eben's eyes were burning, and David for the first time in weeks had life in his dour face,” Keating recalled of the moment they came up with the plan for the heist. “We got all the men up and went to the office...with a small fleet of vehicles.” In Michael Kindman's recollection, it was Lyman who ordered the heist: “Mel was furious. In retaliation, he ordered his 'boys' to take action.”
On May 11th, 1968 at 4:30AM, the heist began. The Fort Hill Community cars quietly rolled down Columbus Avenue in the pre-dawn darkness; the South End office was only two miles away from Roxbury. A run of 45,000 issues had just arrived at the 37 Rutland Street. Brian Kelly, a Valley-contributor to Avatar, was somehow alerted to the situation and began filming and snapping photographs as soon as the “Fort Hill Mob,” as he'd later refer to them in the Boston Free Press, arrived on the scene. Inside, the only staff present was Pebbles, the man whose unannounced Fort Hill visit had inspired the creation of the wall seen being built on the cover of issue 24; Pebbles was either working extremely late or secretly living at the Avatar office.
Pebbles “managed to stall them for several minutes in conversation,” but eventually the mob started loading every issue of the paper, still hot from the presses, and a good deal of the expensive printing equipment into their cars. Pebbles began making phone calls. Charles Giuliano's first move was to notify the police, who proceeded to laugh at him when they heard what had happened to his precious, controversial underground newspaper. The fleet of Fort Hill cars drifted back up to Highland Park, where they locked up 45,000 issues of the faux-Avatar inside the Cochituate Standpipe—the tower—which had been secured by their own personal padlock for over a year at this point, despite being official city of Boston property. As they loaded the confiscated papers into the tower, Michael Kindman recalled an uneasy feeling: “I remember having to simply put my own free-press, pro-constitution values out of my mind in order to tune in to the adventurous spirit of the raid and the camaraderie of working with the other Fort Hill men on something that was obviously important to them. Was this a sellout or a betrayal, or was this an oblique way of protecting the truth?”
Giuliano was devastated to see weeks of his hard work stolen and locked away. He told Brian Keating that he was a fascist and “worse than a police censor.” “Of course he was right, using the conventional terms,” Keating noted, making it clear that, nevertheless, their actions were not illegal. “I am the duly chosen editor of Avatar and am responsible for any publication bearing that name,” he wrote in New York Avatar issue #5.
“You're breaking my heart, Brian,” Giuliano said.
Giuliano had worked hard to make issue #25 a piece of art. Now, nearly every copy had been destroyed. Issue 25 centerfold, which is quite beautiful --->
"For the better part of a week there were negotiations, threats, scenes," Giulianio told Rolling Stone's David Felton. "Fort Hill invited us all up for a big steak dinner at [Jim] Kweskin's house, and we tried to iron it all out.” But the dark secret of the evening was that the outcome of this meeting had already been predetermined by Mel Lyman before anyone had shown up for supper. As the two parties negotiated, Michael Kindman and some other community members removed issue 25 from the tower, drove it down the street, and sold it for scrap paper. An expensive print job was converted into thirty-five bucks. Back at Fort Hill, Brian Kelly set up a projector to run his film of the heist to prove what had happened, but this only upset Lyman who abruptly ended the meeting before it could be screened. At the end of dinner, the Valley editors were informed about what had just happened to issue 25. The message was clear: if the Lyman Family wasn't going be part of Avatar, there would be no Avatar.
“They were talking about [the destruction of the issue] for months in Boston,” Liberation News Service's Ray Mungo wrote in his memoir Famous Long Ago.
"It was at that point I realized,” Charles Giuliano told Rolling Stone, “we were dealing with very dangerous people."
After the shock of this coup wore off, both sides consulted lawyers and bickered with each other in the letters section of the New York Avatar employing a bizarre writing style reminiscent of counts and dukes. “Charlie, great arts comes only from great men,” Keating addressed Giuliano in NY Avatar #5, “what matters pain today if we fathom a further dimension of ourselves and tomorrow we create an art greater for it?” Giuliano's girlfriend Arden Harrison shot back, “John, it was most ungallant of you to publish such false accusations.” Guiliano: “I cannot for the moment regard you with either warmth or friendship.” New York readers, who simply could not have been as aware of Fort Hill drama as Bostonians, must have found the whole thing quite baffling.
What happened next requires a visual aid, as to not be needlessly confusing.
Out of all of these Avatar-publications, American Avatar would be the last one standing. Dave Wilson quit Avatar II early summer '68 to refocus on Broadside of Boston (which had now merged with another paper called The Boston Free Press). “I had hoped that in helping to create Avatar that it would address the social political arena and Broadside could concentrate on the music,” Wilson later wrote. “It did not work out that way.”
With Dave Wilson no longer by his side, Charles Giuliano couldn't keep Avatar II going on his own for much longer. He went on to work for Boston After Dark, and then The Herald Traveler. “My girlfriend [Arden] accused me of selling out when I did that,” Giuliano tells me, “which perhaps I did. But I had this idea about earning my own money.” He adds sarcastically, “What a dumb idea. As I said at the time your were a rich hippie or joined a commune/ cult. It was better to starve.”
Below, Giuliano holding the 1971 issue of Rolling Stone in which his former friend was on the cover, and which he was quoted extensively under the pseudonym, Harry Bikes.
Get the book at AstralWeeks.net
